


Snowbound

by alamorn



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Epistolary, F/F, Femslash Big Bang 2017, Long-Distance Relationship, Political Marriage, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 05:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12977253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: Garlan says that you are sweet and dutiful, but he has not seen a spark of passion. I suspect, Lady Stark, that great passion hides somewhere in that snowbound breast of yours. Perhaps Garlan simply cannot draw it from you? Perhaps, were I there, I could, as easily as you rip a crooked stitch from your lovely needlework.Sansa gets married to one Tyrell and falls in love with another.





	Snowbound

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to B, who held my hand through all of it.
> 
> EDIT: Changed letters from italics to block quotes.

Garlan had three months to mourn Leonette before Margaery told him he was to be married. She’d died more than three months ago, when greyscale first swept over the land, of course, but he had been at war then, and had no time for mourning.

“She’s agreed,” Margaery said, and told him the Winter Queen’s terms. He would be consort, not king. Their children would take the name Stark. Highgarden would send a dowry of men and materials and coin, enough to keep the Dragon Queen from beggaring them for spite.

A month later, he set out, a great train at his back so that progress was slow and painful. It suited — he did not want to go to Winterfell and marry Sansa Stark, and he was sure that she didn’t much want to marry him either. The spring seemed to get thinner the farther North they got. There were places where snow lingered in the shadows, and when the sun was down, his breath billowed steam. He hated it already.

Sansa Stark, Queen in the North, greeted him less as a bride meeting her groom than as a queen meeting a supplicant. Which he was, he supposed. She was very pale against the dark grey of her gown and cloak, and her hair was a deep burnished red, darker than he remembered. Her face was set into stern lines that didn’t change as he swung off his horse and took a knee in the cold mud of the yard.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “it is good to see you well.”

She drew him to his feet with impersonal hands. They were ungloved, despite the chill in the air, and her fingers were pale and bloodless. “Lord Tyrell,” she said. “Let us walk.”

She led him to the godswood and they stood before the tree with its bloody gashed face. “Margaery told you my terms?” she asked, looking at the tree. She had dropped his arm when they came to a stop, and he was unsure how he felt about the loss.

“She did,” he said. “We both signed the contract, and filed a copy with our maester. I have the original in my bags.”

“Good,” she said, and then she looked at him. “You were as kind to me as you could be, in King's Landing,” she said. “I will not forget that.”

He swallowed. “I hope our wedding will not be as miserable as your first,” he said, after a long pause.

She inclined her head gravely. “Nor my second,” she said, and it almost sounded like a joke. Then, “I was sorry to hear about Leonette. She was kind to me, as well.”

“Yes,” Garlan said, his tongue thick in his mouth. He could not bring himself to say more.

She seemed to understand, and to take pity on him. “I will not try to replace her,” she said. “I will ask that you don’t wear mourning at the wedding, or a month after, but after that…”

He ducked his head in acknowledgement.

 

They were married a week later, in front of the heart tree. It was an odd sort of wedding — instead of his own cloak, he gave her a Stark cloak, more elaborate than the one she wore normally. The maester stumbled over the changes in the vows. When Garlan kissed Sansa, her lips were soft and unmoving beneath his.

Dinner was the liveliest he’d seen Winterfell. There was less to the feast than he was used to, but they’d tapped some of the kegs of Arbor Gold from his dowery, and the room slowly got drunk around them. Sansa only sipped at her drink, so Garlan matched her pace. It would be a shame to embarrass himself with drink on his wedding night.

When the candles were dripping low, Sansa rose from her seat. “Winterfell,” she called in a ringing tone, one that traveled the length of the hall despite not seeming to raise her voice. The hall quieted, and Garlan marveled. He did not think her people feared her, though her dire wolf pup was never far from her heels. “My husband and I take our leave.” She favored them all with a smile. “Tomorrow, I want those kegs empty!”

They cheered as she took her leave, Garlan trailing after. They’d discussed beforehand that there would be no bedding — Sansa was more King than Queen and it would do her no good to remind her people that under her dresses there were breasts. And besides, Garlan remembered the mess of her first wedding and bedding and had no inclinations to repeat any part of it.

When they reached the room, Sansa began to loosen the ties of her dress. Garlan found himself wanting to stall. “Wait,” he blurted, before she could actually reveal any skin. She paused, staring curiously at him. “I have a gift for you.”

“Another?” she said, eyebrows raised. “Is my name really worth so much?”

He grinned. “You’d have to ask Margaery. It’s from her. On the desk.”

She went to the desk, with each step sinking into the soft carpets he’d brought as part of his wedding gifts. On the desk he’d left several packets of seeds, each labelled with their type. Vegetables, mostly, and then, on the bottom, roses.

“For the glass gardens,” Garlan said, “when you’ve replaced the glass.”

“Oh,” Sansa said quietly. Her face softened slightly, enough so that he was aware he hadn’t know how tight she held it. She traced something on one of the seed packets. Margaery's handwriting, perhaps.

It took a moment, but her face went smooth and blank once more. He found he hated the expression. “Did she have a message, with this gift?” Sansa asked, turning back to him.

“No,” he said. “Though I think she sorely wanted to.” He looked frankly at her. “My family has not always been kind to you. I hope that you can trust our intentions have changed.”

Sansa hummed noncommittally and swept over to him, framing his face with her hands and turning it up for a kiss. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see her dispassion. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, pretend she was Leonette, but with his eyes closed it would be easier to pretend she was not disgusted by him.

When they were done with their duty, Garlan did his best to sleep. Sansa went to her desk, and he glanced through his lashes at her. She wasn’t working, just turning one of the seed packets over and over in her hands. As exhaustion reared up to take him, he saw her open it and shake a single seed out into her palm. She touched it carefully, and Garlan fell asleep.

 

The dire wolf pup did not spend that first night with them, but that was the only night it did not. He was six months old, Sansa had told Garlan, whelped by her sister’s wolf. His name was Ser, and when Sansa was in a good mood, she would call him her true knight. At six months old, Ser was as big as any dog Garlan had ever met before, all legs and teeth, and a sloped wedge head and great snout that could push into any space, no matter how small.

Ser had a particular liking for sticking his nose in Garlan’s crotch, aggressively enough that Garlan was a little concerned that it was Sansa’s method of ensuring he didn’t try to assert his husbandly rights.

Garlan did not believe in hating animals. And he had practice with being patient and understanding with poorly behaved beasts. But Ser was testing him. At least once a day, he found himself holding Ser by the head, crouching so they were face to face, and attempting an appeal.

“If you make me a eunuch,” he told Ser, very seriously, digging his fingers into the thick ruff of fur that fringed Ser’s jaw, “I will return the favor.”

Ser panted happily.

When they slept, Ser slept between them, his back pressed up against Sansa and his legs fully extended so that Garlan spent the night being jabbed by careless puppy feet.

As the months passed, Ser grew and grew, almost doubling in size every month until he stood as high as Garlan’s hip, and developed a terrible habit of standing up with his feet on Garlan’s shoulders and giving him great slobbery kisses.

Garlan would have hated it more, but it was the only thing that could make Sansa smile at him. He found himself desperate to make her smile. Leonette had laughed easily and often, and he missed her more every time Sansa leveled a cool look at him.

He took over what governance she allowed him to, and worked with the guard near daily. He played with Ser. He tolerated her sister’s visits and threats with good humor. He never touched her unless she touched him first.

Some nights, she would allow her mask to fall, and he could have dinner sent to their rooms. On those nights, she would take off her corset and allow her shoulders to slump, and speak with him almost casually. She would allow him to see her exhaustion, and they would talk over the events of the day, and what lay before them. She would even ask his opinion, occasionally. On those nights, he felt that they were almost friends, that it would not be so terrible to spend the rest of his life with her, even if there was no love between them.

But then she would cool again in the morning. It was almost worse than if she never warmed at all. If she remained cold, he could have resented her. As it was, he caught glimpses of the sweet girl she had been, and the gentle woman that girl could have grown up to be, and those glimpses endeared her to him. The laugh he could coax out of her on the nights she dropped her mask was loud and unselfconscious and nothing like the polite chuckle she used in public.

Outside of their quiet nights, he was desperately lonely. It was cold and the light was curiously thin and he wasn’t adjusting to life in the North. And the worst of it was that Sansa had a correspondent, one whose letters lit her up so much that she even beamed at him. It was unfair of him to be jealous that she had a true friend and he did not, but a year of cold out and in seemed to have made him unfair.

“Do you have a harp?” he asked her one day when a letter had arrived, when he’d turned to the training yards. He’d been dumped in the mud by his sparring partners as often as he could stand. He was facing four at a time, now, and it was too many, but the fights left him sore and tired enough that he didn’t have to pretend not to see how his wife shied from his presence and brightened with her correspondent.

She blinked at him. “I believe we do. Shall I have it brought up for you?”

“Please.”

So she did, brought up to their room and place by the window so the afternoon light fell over it and made the wood glow warmly. And then she watched him tune it and pick his way through some scales.

“I didn’t know you played,” she said, sitting at her desk.

He focused on his clumsy fingers. “Not well,” he said, “but Leonette wanted me to learn, so I learned.” He smiled at the memory of her showing him how to turn notes to music.

“You loved her a great deal,” Sansa said, sounding distant. He heard a drawer open and close.

He glanced up at her. She wasn’t doing anything as showy as fidgeting, but her hands were fisted in her lap. “Yes,” he said, and she nodded, stood, walked over to him.

He half expected his lady wife’s lips to be cold when she pressed them to his cheek, but they were warm and soft and human, slightly greasy with the lip balm they favored up here. He still forgot to use it, and his own balm was nothing against the wind. He always hesitated to kiss her, and it was easier to blame it on the chapped mess his lips had become than to admit he feared he would surprise her and find her made from ice.

She turned for the door, but hesitated before stepping out. “I would like to hear you play sometime.”

He took a deep breath. “Let me remind myself how, first.”

She nodded, and left.

He plucked and thought and plucked and thought. He doubted there would ever be love between the two of them but perhaps there could be friendship. Perhaps this could be what melted the ice between them. Perhaps…

He plucked too hard and the string cut into his finger, in a different place than his sword had left calloused. He made a face but kept playing. He played until the sun faded and his fingertips felt bruised.

 

A week after, he found the letters. She must have been called away from the room in a hurry, for she never left them out, and he would never have gone looking. But there was a delicately carved box sitting out on her desk, full up to the brim with letters in a familiar, looping hand. One letter sat out, folded open, as did the response Sansa had been working on.

She’d left the quill on the letter in her hurry, and it had blotted terribly. He picked it up to check if the ink had soaked through, and to wipe off the desk if it had, but he found himself reading the words.

 

> M, you mix your metaphors. And likely, you overstep, though I must admit I have lost all head for propriety when it comes to you.

 

His stomach clenched, and he found himself sitting, picking up the letter she’d set out. It was multiple pages, but the one she’d left up read,

 

> Garlan says that you are sweet and dutiful, but he has not seen a spark of passion. I suspect, Lady Stark, that great passion hides somewhere in that snowbound breast of yours. Perhaps Garlan simply cannot draw it from you? Perhaps, were I there, I could, as easily as you rip a crooked stitch from your lovely needlework.
> 
> On the subject of your needlework, I adore the piece you sent me. Of course your children will bear only the direwolf, but to see a rose in its jaws? Sansa, I was overcome. I never dreamed, when I first wrote you, that you would accept, or that such fondness would blossom between us. Please, will you tell me how the roses are growing? I would find it such a comfort to know you have some color up in that frozen North of yours. When it blooms, will you send me a portrait with my flowers in your hair? I would treasure it always, and keep it by my heart. Or with that embroidery of yours, when it doesn't match my dress.
> 
>  

He wanted very desperately to put it down, to stop reading, but instead he found himself shuffling pages until he found the first.

 

> Sansa,
> 
> Highgarden is blooming. I spend my free time — and some not so free time — walking the gardens. It is green and lush with growing things, and I wish I could see you on a backdrop of Tyrell roses. Oh, you would shine!
> 
> Thank you for asking after Loras — I told him of your concern and he was well pleased to hear it. He’s almost the man he was! He has not returned to the sword, but he can walk without too much pain.
> 
> I was about to bemoan that Tyrell turned to a house of cripples, but it would be cruel of me to do so. My brothers still live, after all. I hope that is not too terrible of me to say? I would know, were we sat together. I would be able to catch each twitch of your brow and lips and apologize immediately for any overstep. Though I’m sure that you are tired of my apologies by now. I would have to dress them up so prettily, when I could see you glancing away with impatience.
> 
> Would you forgive me if I got down on my knees and begged? Oh, Sansa, I can beg so prettily. Please, Lady Stark, Queen of the North, Warden of Winterfell, I spoke without thought or malice. If you do not forgive me I will rend my garments, tear my dress from my bosom, put the point of your executioner’s sword to my breast, and press it home until I have made amends!
> 
> Or perhaps that would be too dramatic? You were always a gentle girl, Sansa, though I know the winter has turned you cold and hard as ice. Where you were a bubbling stream, you are a frozen river. But one that remembers the softness of girlhood, I think.
> 
> No, I would not rend my dress, or bare my breast. I would shower you in sweets, hire the most skilled of storytellers. I would dress you in the loveliest gowns, with my own hands, smear soot upon my brow, become your ladies maid until your frozen heart softened to me.
> 
> Garlan says —

 

“Garlan.” Sansa’s voice was even, but he fancied he could hear some emotion in it. Distress, maybe. Or embarrassment.

He was too angry to be pleased at this weakness in her armor. “Shall I get down on my knees and bare my breast, My Lady, for being such a terrible husband that I drove you to my sister?”

“Margaery is my dear friend,” she said, trying to pull the letter from his hands. He tightened his grip so the parchment crumpled and she stopped before it could be damaged further. “You would not be so cruel as to begrudge me a friend.”

“A friend, no. This?” He waved the parchment at her. “This is not how a friend speaks. I would begrudge you a lover, _especially_ my _sister_.”

“I have not seen Margaery since we were girls in King’s Landing. How do you think I took her as a _lover_?”

“I suspect, Lady Stark, that great passion hides somewhere in that snowbound breast of yours _,”_ he quoted, voice tight with control. “Sansa,” he continued, quieter. “I thought…I thought we had an understanding. No love would ever be between us, but maybe, someday, friendship.”

She sat on the bed. The distance between them seemed uncrossable, and the harp in the corner was only a reminder of his foolishness. He missed Leonette, acutely, as he had been able to pretend he did not for months now. “You have been as fine a husband as I could hope for,” she said.

He scoffed. “Say what you mean, just once.”

Her eyes were flat when she looked at him, flat and cold. “You have done me no harm. You were no insult to bear. I have no intention of killing you. I have not been the girl who dreamed of a lordly knight for a husband for years now, but you would have pleased that girl.” She swallowed. “It is no fault of yours, _or mine,_ that I do not love you and never will.”

His breath shuddered out of him. The tension in him unspooled, enough that his shoulders slumped. “My sister?” he asked.

“A friend,” she said. “One who understands me better than any other. Nothing more, or less.”

“You’ll want to tell her that,” he said, and left.

 

He went for a ride in the wolfwood, Ser trotting along after him, tongue lolling. Though he didn’t truly like the beast, he was vindictively grateful that Ser had chosen to follow him rather than stay with Sansa. He knew Margaery, and that was not how she wrote to her friends.

And Margaery was the correspondent who made Sansa so happy.

“Gods,” he said, staring down at Ser. “I’m going to have to write her, aren’t I? Have to help my _sister_ romance my _wife_.”

Ser whined with excitement, ears pinned to his head, tongue lolling. “Fine,” Garlan told him. “Fine.” He kicked the horse into a canter and they raced through the trees.

He didn’t return to Winterfell until it was nearly dark. He had to dismount and lead his horse to keep her from tripping. Ser kept pushing in close to him and licking his fingers between panting breaths.

When Garlan brought him up to their room, he leapt on the bed and went right to sleep. Sansa sat at her desk, thin lipped and pale. She looked furious. She looked fearful. He walked over to her and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek while she held very still.

“Sansa,” he said.

“Garlan,” she responded.

“I’m sorry.”

She startled, almost enough to thaw. Then she took a deep breath and rose from her seat. “Come with me.”

Despite his aching legs and the exhaustion that had settled deep in him, he followed her. They wound through the halls of Winterfell, then out into the yard, then into the glass gardens. They walked past rows of growing green things, leafy and beautiful, the soil rich and dark, the air warm and wet, even in the night. She brought him all the way to the back, where a single rose bush grew. The blossoms were deep red, small and almost perfect. Not the roses of an experienced gardener, but a caring one.

“She…sent me the seeds, with all the vegetables. And a note, a month later, with instructions on growing it. I didn’t write back, at first — it took me a very long time to forgive her.”

“You don’t have to tell me this.”

She stroked a waxy petal. “No, you deserve to know. It is no fault of your own that I cannot love you. I cannot love a man again. I thought I could not love at all, that my correspondence with Margaery was a hard won friendship.” She looked at him, then, her face still and composed. Her voice hardly wavered as she spoke, but the flowers trembled where she touched them, a fine tremor passing from her hand to their petals. “You were right. What I have with Margaery is more than that.”

“You love her,” he said with terrible certainty.

“Do not ask me to say that.”

“When she comes, you will have to,” he said. “Or you will end it. I know my sister, and all of her patience is used up elsewhere.”

“On her game of thrones,” Sansa said, turning from him once more.

“Yours too, Queen in the North.”

“Winter plays no games,” she said, retreating from the rose bush as if the frost in her voice would kill the tender roots.

“But you are not winter, or a wolf, as I am not a rose. Sansa, it would be a great favor to me if I did not have to talk you through wooing my sister. She’s coming. I’ve already sent the raven.”

“You suborn my wolf, and now you force me into the field,” she said wryly. “Your talent for war has not left you entirely.”

“Not entirely,” he agreed. “Sansa, let us go to bed.”

She nodded and took his arm for the walk back. There was warmth where they were pressed together. _Only human_ , he found himself thinking. _She’s only human after all._

 

In the morning, he sent the raven he’d claimed to have sent the day before. It was a simple note. _Margaery, come to Winterfell. Please._

He only hoped she would.

 

Margaery arrived a month later, with only a small train of attendants and guards. It was the lightest he’d ever seen her travel. She swept out of her carriage and across the yard, laid a kiss on his cheek and then one on Sansa’s. “Brother,” she said, smiling. “And my lovely Sansa.”

And Sansa’s whole face turned bright with joy. Her eyes crinkled, her lips turned up, muscles he had not known were held tight relaxed. She looked like a different person. Garlan tried very hard to feel happy for her, and not jealous.

“Join us,” Sansa said, taking Margaery’s arm and leading her in. “We have much to talk about.” Feeling somewhat at odds, Garlan followed.

The third time Sansa favored Margaery with a tentative smile, he decided he couldn’t do it, and peeled off from them. He headed for the glass gardens and went to the flower. He hadn’t gardened since he came North, and he’d been only passable in Highgarden. He had the urge anyway, to prune and shape the rosebush, the symbol of his sister’s love — forgiveness? Contrition? He wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, he suspected that if he started, he would not stop till the bush was uprooted, so he left it alone.

Margaery joined him some time later. He wasn’t sure whether her lips were red from kisses, or if she’d bitten them on her way to him, to be a brat.

“Gallant as ever, Garlan,” she said. “Nobly stepping out of the way so I may pursue your wife.”

He scoffed at the idea of nobility. “I doubt I could stop you if I wanted to.”

“But you don’t,” she said, looking sidelong at him from under her lashes.

“Sansa is a fine woman,” he said. “She is not Leonette.”

Margaery dipped her chin in understanding. “I am sorry to have done this to you.”

“Which part?” he asked. “The marriage or the cuckolding?”

“Don’t be crass, Garlan,” she said. “There is no risk of me getting the heir to Winterfell on your wife. Both.”

He touched her arm in acknowledgment, or perhaps forgiveness. “I love you,” he said. “I hope she makes you happy.”

“Happy?” Margaery laughed. “What do I care for happiness? What does Sansa?”

“A great deal, I believe,” Garlan interrupted, before she could truly begin.

She rolled her eyes at him. “My correspondence with Sansa is the most invigorating part of my life. Like riding a galloping horse right at a jump you’re not sure you can clear —“ Her eyes were bright when she looked at him. “She hated me at first.” A long pause. “I brought her letters, if you would like to see them. I think I owe you that much.”

Garlan hesitated for a long moment. “Sansa…”

“Agreed to it. There are a few we’ll be holding back, but the earlier ones…just so you can see how it started. We never meant to hurt you.”

 

They presented him with the letter together. Margaery touched Sansa’s hand after she handed over the thick sheaf of paper, a gesture that was all intent and no practice. It was clumsy. She missed Sansa’s fingers at first, then held them too hard, a quick squeeze and release.

It was unlike Margaery to allow herself to be seen doing anything she did not excel at. He did her the favor of pretending not to notice.

The first letter read:

> Dear Lady Margaery Tyrell,
> 
> I sensed a rebuke in that letter of yours. It would be more formal of me to be arch and condescending — after all, I have the upper hand in this arrangement, and you can wound nothing but my pride.
> 
> However, I believe I can speak frankly with you, as you opened negotiations so frankly with me. I want to take the opportunity to be cruel, to say, oh! Poor Margaery, was I easier to manipulate when I was thirteen and alone?
> 
> But that would be unjust of me, and I do my best to be just. My father said that the man who passes the sentence must swing the sword. I am no man, and I bear no sword, but I think the lesson can be applied widely.
> 
> I do not want to be your enemy, Margaery. We are to be sisters, after all, as you always planned.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Sansa Stark, Queen in the North

 

The response:

> Your Majesty, Sansa Stark, Queen in the North, and Warden of Winterfell, of a bloodline older than history,
> 
> Ice lives again in your tongue. Or should I say your pen? If we are being frank, I mean, as I notice that you managed to put all of your grievances down without offering me an opening to apologize. You have swung the sword, Lady Stark, and I sit here at my desk, wounded but alive. You shall have to refine your approach if you plan to replace the sword with the word.
> 
> Yes, Sansa, I have always wanted us to be sisters. I would have much preferred to spirit you away to Highgarden, where it was safe, and you would have been surrounded with beautiful things. I have apologized for our ill use of you. I have sent you my brother. He is in your power as you would have been in ours. I’m sure that hasn’t escaped you, though he may not have realized the irony.
> 
> He was never part of our plotting, Sansa, please tell me you won’t take this anger out on him. Excoriate me as you will. Flay me until I bleed from a thousand such wounds. Have you wondered at how well the Tyrells have survived the burning so well? We have deep roots, and the roots are our women. I was always meant to rule, Sansa. I will apologize for my actions. I will not apologize for who I am.
> 
> But that was quite an aggressive attack on my dear new sister. I will apologize for that — shall I say it was unjust of me?
> 
> Show me your justice, Sansa. Present your evidence. How do you sentence me?
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Margaery

 

Garlan glanced up at Margaery and found Sansa had left while he read. “You sent this to her?” he said, half amused, half amazed Sansa hadn’t killed him as a message. “I do wonder at your judgement.”

She blushed, which he hadn’t seen since she was but a girl. When she didn’t say anything, he turned back to the letters.

 

Sansa’s response started,

> My Margaery,
> 
> For that is what you claim to be — if I called would you come running, present yourself for trial? Unfortunately, I lost the hairnet in my flight.
> 
> Do you think if you anger me I will break our terms? You will have to try harder than that. Please do! No one speaks to me with such energy when they see the crown on my head. Perhaps you would be biddable, were you here. Perhaps you would beg forgiveness.
> 
> Perhaps I would forgive you.
> 
> But you are there, and I am here, and so it is irrelevant. We have only our lashes of parchment and ink to castigate each other, and that grows wearying. How often can I hurl the same hurts at you? When Joffrey had me beaten, I learned that it never stops hurting, not really, but that the same blow repeated loses some of the fear. You know what is coming, and you know it will hurt, and you know you cannot stop it, and there is a peace in that.
> 
> I will not repeat this blow until your flinch is more habit than hurt.
> 
> You sent me roses, with the gifts. Why? They are pretty baubles, but quite useless up here. They are not even the blue roses of winter. They will never live out of the glass gardens. I have been consumed with the question. What do you gain from this?
> 
> Sansa

 

> Dear Sansa,
> 
> That blow landed as you intended. I will not give you the pleasure of more detail.
> 
> The roses are pointless, and that is the point. We sent you wood, and men, and iron, and seeds for all the crops you could dream of, and all of those things are necessary. The roses are not. They are just beautiful, because you deserve to be surrounded by beauty, Sansa. How are they growing? Have you managed to keep them alive?
> 
> Send me a rose, when they bloom. Dry it out and tuck it in your letter. It will soften the next blow you aim my way. Or it will turn me soft, and the blow will land all the harder. I would not want to underestimate you, Sansa. You have grown cleverer than I ever dreamed.
> 
> I do not want to be your enemy, Sansa. You said much the same to me, when we started our correspondence, and I never repeated it back to you. But I don’t. I would not have sent you Garlan if I did. I want to be allies, because we can lessen each other’s weaknesses, and because I like you, Sansa. I liked you while we were in King’s Landing together, and I like you now, even as you strike blow after blow.
> 
> Do you like me, Sansa? I would understand if you don’t, and I would be surprised if you did. Yet I hope that some small part of you is as charmed by me as I am charmed by you.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Margaery

 

> My dear Margaery,
> 
> Do I like you? I had to think about it, but I find that yes, I do like you. I suspect this is the set up for some blow, but I will be braced for it. I enjoy our repartee. And the rose is growing — growing strong, even — and every time I look at it, I find a softness in my heart that I had thought long hammered out.
> 
> I hope we can even be friends some day, Lady Margaery, instead of merely not enemies. I find myself looking forward to your letters, and I look forward to so little. Will the crops come in without trouble? Will my sister wend her way south to see me, little wildling that she has become? Will Margaery write back?
> 
> I have become such a simple woman, with such simple wants. When I was a girl, I dreamed of being a queen. Now that I am one, I dream of someone taking the crown from my brow and kissing away the marks it has left. I dream of running with the wolves, of being free to wake and sleep when I want, of stretching out my arms and not bumping into a responsibility.
> 
> But you never asked to be my confidant, and I will not burden you with it. I have been thinking of trusting Garlan with more of myself, yet I shrink back from it. I am uncertain why -- he has given me no cause to doubt him and yet I hold myself back.
> 
> The roses have not yet bloomed. Instead I have included a scrap of embroidery. I did not intend to place a rose in the wolf’s jaws, but my hands seemed to act without input. I hope you like it, messy little piece that it is.
> 
> Tell me of Highgarden, Margaery. Tell me of summer and warmth. I am so cold up here, where the snow never quite recedes. Winterfell’s walls are rebuilt, the hot springs run through them, and still the cold will not leave me. I suspect it never will. And yet when I think of warmth, I think of King’s Landing, and I shrink from it. I would rather freeze than be in that sick heat again, even with the Iron Throne melted to slag.
> 
> I am grateful that Jon does not bring his dragon to Winterfell. They are such great beasts that I find I cannot look at them properly. They hurt my eyes, like staring into the sun. But I ramble, and you are busy. Let me ask a real question, before I lose your attention: How is Loras? 
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Sansa

 

“Is this why you told her I thought her passionless?” Garlan asked mildly.

Margaery looked at her hands. “Will you make me confess it? I was jealous. Garlan, you get to _see_ her. All I have is words on paper.”

That was such an inescapably stupid statement that Garlan stood and went over to Margaery, carefully taking her face in his hands. She avoided his gaze, but that didn’t matter. He pressed a kiss to her forehead while she whined half-heartedly.

“Baby sister,” he said, releasing her. “I know you’re not foolish enough to think that’s true, so I’m going to go and take a walk and forget you said it.”

That was how the visit went. It was hard to be in the same room as Margaery and Sansa at the same time. They were too shy and happy with each other. He felt uncomfortable when he looked at them, as if he were an intruder and his presence a wound. He would spend the edges of the day with Sansa. They still slept in the same bed.

She had thawed to him so much that she was hardly the same woman he had married. She asked question after question of Margaery as a child, her eyes sparkled, she laughed easily. He thought of playing the harp for her, but that felt a step too far, for the moment. A vulnerability he wasn’t ready for. And besides, he hadn’t reached a level he was comfortable with.

His days were spent with Margaery, amusing her and hearing stories of Highgarden, while Sansa took care of the business of ruling. One of the grain crops had failed, taken with a black rot around the roots. It wasn’t a catastrophe, not in spring, and not with the other crops healthy, but it required some reallocation of foods and much soothing of fearful peasants who remembered what it was like to starve.

The evenings they spent with each other, and Garlan spent with Ser, or in the yard, or practicing his harp. It was a routine, and less painful than it might have been, but the time passed quickly. Before he was ready -- or Sansa or Margaery, either -- it was time for Margaery to go.

They said a stiff goodbye in yard, and when Margaery was seated in her carriage, Sansa seemed to get up her courage. “Wait,” she said, in her voice of command, the one he so admired. The driver waited, and Margaery looked back, eyes full and hopeful. “I have one last gift.” With some sense of ceremony, she drew a long stemmed rose from her pocket. Some luck had kept the bloom from getting crushed under her heavy skirts. “It is not dried,” she said, handing it up to Margaery, “but I hope you will treasure it all the same, as I do the bush.”

With all the witnesses of the yards, there was not much Margaery could do but say, “Thank you, Lady Stark. It will serve as a reminder that beauty blooms in the North, beauty I hope to see again some day,” though Garlan suspected that was the least of what she wanted to express.

He stayed in the yard with Sansa to watch the carriage and escort ride away. When it was far enough that all details were lost, he said, “Shall we go in?”

She blinked and sighed, and took his arm. “Yes. There is much to do, and I cannot mope like a child all day.”

He thought for a moment as they walked toward the hold. “Soon, I will have a gift for you, as well.”

“Gifts after gifts,” she said, with an amused glance. “Perhaps someday they will even make us happy.”

“A worthy goal,” he agreed.

 

The letter arrived during dinner a month later, the Tyrell bannerman well pleased to be able to sit at the long table and dig in. The looping hand on the front was unmistakably Margaery’s, and Sansa glanced at it throughout the meal. She glanced at him, too, almost nervous.

“When you write back,” he told her, “tell her hello for me?”

When she nodded, he went to join the bannerman. He wanted to hear the news Margaery had failed to pass on.

That night, she sat at her desk and began to write.

“I think my gift is ready,” he said and sat at his harp. She looked expectantly at him, and with a deep breath, he began to play. It was a song of his own devising, that stole strains from _The Gold Rose_ and one of the many songs about wolves in the night. It was a sweet, sad, song, and someday there would be words for it, that captured the feeling and obscured identity. It was a song for Sansa, and Margaery, and his own unhappiness to be thrust between them.

She was crying by the end, though he said not a word. When the last note shivered off the string, she wiped her cheeks and said, “Thank you. Thank you.”


End file.
